When I’m teaching writing, one of my favorite things to cover is the author’s voice. It’s an intriguing subject for me because a strong author voice can make a piece, and a boring author voice can break it. 

When I was running The Copperfield Review, one thing that quickly turned me off from wanting to publish a story was when the voice of the piece sounded like something anyone from anywhere could write. A strong author’s voice can make your writing stand out from the crowd. 

Finding your author’s voice sounds important, and it is. But what does it actually mean?

Peter Elbow was an acclaimed professor of composition, and in his seminal work Writing With Power, he said that “Writing with voice is writing into which someone has breathed. It has that fluency, rhythm, and liveliness that exists naturally in the speech of most people when they are enjoying a conversation.” He also said that “Real voice is whatever yields resonance, whatever makes the words bore through.” 

Your voice is the unique fingerprint of your writing. It’s the way you piece words together on the page. Your voice is your tone, your diction, your rhythm, your syntax, and the perspective through which you filter the world. 

While I love teaching voice, the fascinating part of it (at least for me) is that I can’t actually teach writers what their voices should be. I can show examples of strong authorial voices, I can explain how I find my author voices (because I have more than one), and I can recommend exercises, but an author’s voice is completely unique and it’s up to each individual to find their voice. 

Here are some of the ways you can begin to discover your very own unique author’s voice

Write a Lot

Discovering voice doesn’t come from thinking about writing. It comes from writing. A lot. Journal. Blog. Write stories, poems, essays, letters, emails, novels, all of it. The more you write, the more patterns will begin to emerge. Notice those patterns. What words, phrases, tones, or rhythms are you drawn to? The recipe for your secret sauce is in there. Don’t worry about sounding good or literary, especially not in the beginning. Just keep on writing. Finding your author’s voice means leaning into what is special and wonderful about you. 

Read a Lot

Expose yourself to different voices. Read authors with bold, distinct styles such as Charles Dickens, Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Stephen King, or whoever it is you love. More than likely, your favorite authors have distinct voices, which is one reason why you love them. 

Pay attention to how their language sounds. What makes them unique? Then ask yourself what kinds of voices are you drawn to. What feels natural to you?

When I was a young writer, I used to sit down with my spiral notebook and a pen and copy out favorite passages from Charles Dickens, Toni Morrison, and Walt Whitman. I wanted a visceral understanding of how they connected words into sentences into paragraphs (or stanzas in Whitman’s case). That doesn’t mean that I copied their voices. But it does mean that I studied them closely. 

You can base your authorial voice on your favorite authors. When I wrote the Hembry Castle books, I deliberately tried to emulate Dickens’ style. It was a fun challenge. 

Notice Your Speaking Voice

I tell my writing students to pay attention to the way they use their speaking voices. Often, their writing voices are rooted in their speaking voices. What is your sense of humor? Your cultural background or your unique way of seeing things? 

Do you speak in short, punchy sentences or long, winding ones? Do you lean into sarcasm or sentimentality? If you’re not used to paying attention to yourself in that way, you can record yourself telling a story out loud. Then try writing it down the way you told it.

Author voice is, in many ways, the written version of your personality.

Write Like No One’s Watching

It’s hard to find your voice if you’re constantly worried about what your readers will think. You might try writing just for yourself. Write free writes, zero-draft scenes, and poetry for no one’s eyes but your own. Remove the pressure when you sit down to put words on paper. When you’re not performing for an audience, your natural voice has room to emerge.

Identify What You Care About

Voice is tied to interests and passions. What themes do you return to again and again? What ideas keep you up at night? What questions do you wrestle with in your life and in your work? When you write about what matters to you, you write more honestly, and honesty is the foundation of voice. Actually, honesty is the foundation of all good writing.

I know everyone is trying to figure out the popular tropes so that they can write something that’s already in vogue, but as soon as you start writing to other people’s expectations your unique point of view is lost. You shouldn’t chase trends. You should write what feels true to you.

Revise With Intention

In early drafts, you’re discovering what you want to say. In later drafts, you’re shaping how you want to say it. When you revise, listen for when the writing feels flat or unnatural. Those are often the moments when you’re not in your voice. You’re trying to sound like someone else or forcing language that doesn’t fit. Learning to trust your instincts is one of the best things you can do for your writing.

We write for the ear, not for the eye. Your writing can look perfect with beautiful fonts and perfectly indented paragraphs, but if it doesn’t sound right it isn’t right. Read your writing aloud. Make sure your sentences flow from one thought to the next. If a sentence or a passage doesn’t sound right, rewrite it until it does.

I’m not worried about voice in my earliest drafts. I’m currently writing the second draft of my novel, and I’m telling you right now that the narrative voice is boring me to tears. It looks like something my high school students would write. It’s overly simple, there’s barely any description, and it reads like anyone could have written it. I don’t worry about voice until I’m on the third draft. That’s when I start to edit for word choice, syntax, and poetic devices.

Give It Time

Finding your voice isn’t a one-time event. The more you write, the more confident and consistent your voice becomes. Be patient and give yourself time to become the writer you want to be. Keep showing up to the page. Your voice is already inside you. Now you need to allow it to open up and bloom. 

And just to make things more interesting, author voice can change from project to project. The voice I used for the Loving Husband Trilogy is not the same voice I used for the Hembry Castle books. For every new world that I write, I have to discover the voice that works for that world. How do I do it? Trial and error. I try something, and if I don’t like it, I try something new. When you find the right voice for that project, you’ll know. 

Your writing voice isn’t something you need to invent. You can uncover your author’s voice by writing honestly and often. Don’t wait until you feel like you’ve found your voice before you begin writing. Start writing and growing today. We don’t need another writer who sounds like everyone else (I’m looking at you, AI). We need your unique way of looking at the world.